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TriplePoints of Interest – Week of July 27

Summer’s heating up and so are the acquisition and earnings news! Big this week are Ouya’s new home with Razer and Valve’s whopping 10 figure earnings! On that note, what are your favorite games on Ouya and Steam?

Razer Forges new bond with Ouya

Razer has confirmed they have purchased Ouya. According to TechCrunch, all of Ouya’s VC investors have cashed out and that Alibaba, who invested $10 million in the platform, will be working alongside Razer moving forward. Ouya CEO, Julie Uhrman, confirmed Razer has not purchased the hardware section of the business. All Ouya users will be transitioned into Razer’s Android TV service, Forge.

Valve earnings pick up major Steam

Valve announced Steam raked in a whopping $1.5 billion in 2014, according to Ubergizmo. Market data firm, SuperData, revealed that about $400 million alone was brought in by Valve’s own games such as DotA 2, Team Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. They also state that since Steam takes a 30% cut of every game sale on the platform, about $330 million came from royalties alone.

Consoles cross the Great Wall of China

China has lifted the final restrictions on console sales, making game consoles like Wii U, Xbox One, and PS4 free to enter the country, said SiliconAngle. When the ban was initially lifted earlier this year, console makers like Microsoft and Sony were forced to funnel all systems through Shanghai, China’s experimental free-trade zone, but can now ship and manufacture them anywhere in the country. While it is still unknown how well the Chinese public will receive these new products, Sony told the Wall Street Journal that they welcome the news. According to GamesIndustry International, Microsoft’s Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, says the company will use this opportunity to work with Chinese game studios to bring Chinese games to Xbox’s international audience.

Gaming mouse and keyboard enter the living room

Sony revealed the Tactical Assault Commander 4, the officially-licensed mouse and keyboard compatible with the PlayStation 4. According to IGN, the device is listed for an October 4 release in the UK and a November 30 release in Japan for a price of $120.

Photo from AFTVnews

TriplePoints of Interest – Week of June 29

Here is an earlier edition of TriplePoints of Interest as it’s almost time for us to head out on our merry way for the 4th of July long weekend! Anyone here pre-ordered a Steam Machine? Purchased a Compendium in Dota 2 and helped Valve create the biggest prize pool in the history of eSports?

A rare $7 million unicorn

Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank host, Mark Cuban, announced he has invested $7 million in eSports betting platform, Unikrn. According to Inc, Mr. Cuban stated he is attracted to the eSports space as it presents a new category of competition.

Full Steam ahead for Steam Machines

After going up for pre-order on June 4, Valve announced all their hardware has been sold out, according to GamesIndustry International. This suggests the Steam Machines will be popular with gamers come launch on November 10.

A super rare $15 million crowd

The largest prize pool in the history of competitive video games is officially Dota 2: The International’s $15 million purse, according to IGN. The funds were generated mostly by fans purchasing the Compendium, a digital program available within the game client. Valve’s approach in generating funds for eSports prize pools is unique in that it relies mostly on crowdfunding.

In other (crowd)funding news…

After publicly supporting the crowdfunding initiatives for Shenmue 3, Sony announced First Flight, its proprietary internal crowdfunding service where employees may seek funding for new business and product ideas from people both inside and outside the company. According to GamesIndustry International, the first project on First Flight will be Huis, and e-paper based adaptive remote controller.

Photo from Variety

TriplePoints of Interest – Week of June 1

Who’s going to be picking up a Steam Machine? Looks like Valve dominated headlines this week! This, and other great things to come for eSports and mobile games, plus words of wisdom from the CEO of Gazillion.

Remember remember the 10th of November

The Steam Machine and its Steam Link controller have been given a release date, according to Ars Technica! Valve’s first entry into the hardware market will launch on November 10, 2015. Consumers who pre-order will get them as early as October 16. Valve provided a demo of the controller on their YouTube channel.

Return to (Steam) sender

Valve has made a major change in their Steam policy where they will now offer refunds to consumers who have played less than 2 hours of a game and apply within 14 days of purchase, says GamesIndustry International. Valve stated their reason for making the change was to allow players who find their PCs don’t meet hardware requirements, bought a game by mistake, or just didn’t enjoy their game to reverse their purchase. This rule applies to DLC, in-game items, and pre-purchased titles as well.

Make It Rain! Make It Rain, eSports!

Newzoo predicts that eSports will grow to be worth over $250 million this year, and prize money to top $71 million, says GamesIndustry International. The US and China take the lead in prize money offerings. They also predict the number of eSports enthusiasts to grow by 37% compared to 2014.

Turn that MMO around!

Gazillion CEO, David Brevik, provided advice for developers hoping to improve the state of struggling online games based on his success turning around the Marvel Heroes MMO. Mr. Brevik told Develop that the key strategy was speaking to the community directly about the changes that needed to be made and not being afraid of changing everything. He cited weekly patches and overhauling the business model, while keeping the community informed about the changes, as the top tactics.

A New Mobile Hope!

Kabam just announced a Star Wars-themed mobile RPG set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, according to Polygon. Titled Star Wars Uprising, the game tasks players with creating a character, choosing a class like smugglers, bounty hunters, rebel guerrillas, and more, and embarking on missions that allow for real-time cooperative play. The game will be free-to-play and is expected to roll out sometime this fall.

Photo from Ars Technica

Five Things You Should Know About Playing Professional Dota

The original “Dota” was a mod created for Warcraft III, and after the games immense success other MOBA style games debuted and stuck to the addictive formula, including League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth. Valve, best known for their online distribution platform and the Half-Life series, acquired the rights to Dota in 2009 which they subsequently used to release Dota 2. In 2011 they hosted The International, a three day Dota 2 tournament held in Cologne Germany with a $1.6 Million Dollar Prize Pool and a grand prize of one million dollars. It was at this moment that eSports (electronic sports) had finally arrived in the eyes of players and fans.

To celebrate that original tournament, Valve recently debuted the Free to Play, a feature-length documentary that follows three players who competed on different teams in the 2011 tournament. The documentary is definitely worth checking out, as it give a great insights into the trials and tribulations such an event has on one’s like. That being said, here are five things you should know about being a professional Dota player.

Continue reading Five Things You Should Know About Playing Professional Dota

The Rise of Valve – Capitalizing on Digital Distribution Domination

Recently, we had some big news from one of the largest, and well respected, companies in the gaming industry: Valve announced that they were officially entering the console market with “Steam Machines,” gaming consoles that aim to bring the PC gaming experience to the living room. I’m pretty excited to see Valve enter a hardware industry that is currently dominated by only three competitors. They’re bringing a lot of new ideas to the table, such as a haptic-based controller, which may shape the future of the console landscape. Yet, what fascinates me the most is looking back and realizing that Valve has been leaving bread crumb trails all along, even during the inception of Steam.

Steam Client: Digital Domination

When Valve debuted Steam in 2003, it was an absolute pain. The amount of time it took me to patch and boot up Half Life 2 was tedious, and if it weren’t for the fact Valve’s flagship title was absolutely one of the best games of all time, I think it would’ve been dead on arrival. Still, Steam eventually became a pioneer for digital distribution. Many third-party publishers including Eidos, iD Software, Take Two and many others joined in to reap the profit margins from selling their titles online. The acceptance of digital distribution paved the way for consoles to develop a similar model on their platforms; if it wasn’t for Valve playing the role of the innovator in the gaming industry, I doubt the Xbox Marketplace or PlayStation Store would be what they are today.

Digital distribution is the foundation of Valve’s Steam Machines, and without proper dominance on that front, there was no way they could move onto building hardware.

Are You Starting to see the Big Picture?

It was made clear that Valve wanted to move in this direction at Sony’s 2010 E3 Press Conference. Valve’s Co-founder and PC enthusiasts’ most beloved figurehead, Gabe Newell, came onto the stage and stated, “As an industry we’re going through a transition. As an entertainment as a product to an entertainment as a service… it’s about giving gamers a complete connected social experience.”

This foreshadowed Valve’s motives. They wanted to grow their platform into something bigger, encapsulating not only the PC Market, but also console gamers. But the PC developer/distributor needed to create something that would make it easier for console gamers to embrace their platform… and that’s where Big Picture comes in – a new way to experience Steam.

Everything about Big Picture was designed to take advantage of the living room experience and bring console gamers one step closer to the PC world. It was a digital platform with an online user interface any console gamer could jump in and understand. Best of all, with over 2500+ store titles already available at launch, Valve was already one step ahead.

The Final Stretch into New Familiar Territory

But they faced one final problem — most console gamers couldn’t afford a powerful PC rig to take Valve’s offering.

Valve needed to find a way to bring down the cost, and that’s where Steam Machines make their entrance. With multiple models, Valve’s approach to the Steam Machines hardware allows anyone to pick up a console at their own personal price point. Best of all, it’s customizable, making the idea of owning a Steam Machine much cheaper in the long run since you won’t need to buy a brand new console every year. It’s a win-win situation for Valve, its partners, developers, and gamers everywhere.

What makes it even better is Valve isn’t directly competing with the big three (yet). Their focus has been to dominate the digital distribution space; they already have the upper hand due to how much they’ve invested in the market.

Steam Machines are going to be Big

What we do know is this: Valve’s offering and entrance to the hardware industry is giving momentum to PC gamers and console gamers alike. There is something here for any type of gamer here, and the amount of flexibility will be a key strategy they will capitalize on. We’re one step closer in bridging the gap between both console and PC gamers, and I for one, cannot wait.

Can Console Gamers Ever Embrace an All-Digital Future? Not Without Help From the Big Three

When Xbox One was revealed in May, it was touted as a living room centerpiece and the quintessential go-to for sports and set box interactivity on a scale of integration not yet seen before. In reaction to the inaugural reveal, the gaming masses all cried out in a cynicism that shook the world. “Where are the games?!” the gamers cried. “We don’t care about enhanced TV!” they lamented. One particular provision for the next-gen console was most loathed though—the requirement for the Xbox One to be connected to the internet once a day.

While consoles have seen their own versions of DRM before, such as online pass requirements for used games, Xbox One’s (now deceased) requisite to connect to the internet would have been the first true form of DRM to ever grace consoleboxes and their users. The outcry rocked Microsoft so heavily that the Redmond-based behemoth did a complete one-eighty after E3 and reversed many of its previously announced policies, including that scorned daily online check-in. With Microsoft’s concession, it was a triumphant moment for the everyday consumer, but it also proved something else substantial: console gamers are not ready for a future where digital distribution is the de facto method for purchasing and playing games.

While the notion of not being able to lend out games, or to not even have a lovely retail box adorn your shelf, seems absolutely preposterous to console fanatics, this same concept of digital distribution is one that is cherished—and even preferred—by PC gamers around the globe. How is it that two groups of consumers can be so headstrong and passionate about gaming and yet have two radically different opinions on the subject of how they purchase their games?

Years ago, PC gaming was much like the console: you went to a store, you purchased a box with a disc in it, and you put it into your computer to install and play. One caveat was that often a serial code would have to be entered, something that console users didn’t see until this current generation, but other than that the two platforms were near identical. Same humble beginnings yet two starkly different audiences, so what gave?

You could posit that Valve, and its own platform Steam, have played a large part in swaying consumers to embrace digital distribution, but it wasn’t always this friendly between Steam and its users. Anyone who remembers the launch of Half-Life 2 in 2004, with its then novel idea of connecting to the internet to activate the product as a requirement, will recall just how bad Valve botched the launch with servers not working and how furious consumers were because they couldn’t play the game they purchased. Since that time, Steam has proven to be a viable platform because Valve has consistently shown consumers that they have the infrastructure and bandwidth to make this work and, in exchange for an all-digital storefront, Steam is able to discount its titles significantly when warranted. These two factors are key to understanding why a PC gamer has no problem with not owning a disc.

But whereas PC gamers have Steam, GOG.com and countless other digital distribution platforms, which invites competition, console gamers only have three: PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and Nintendo’s digital storefronts across its platforms. Unless one of the big three goes full throttle into digital, it will be a long time before the console gamer can be convinced that their hard-earned cashola is worth spending on zeroes & ones instead of a multi-layered plastic circle purchased at GameStop.

You see Microsoft’s Games on Demand sale going on right now and think, “that looks a lot like what Steam does” so clearly Microsoft knows the power of digital distribution. Sony has been known to have sales of its own on PlayStation Network. However, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo also have strong ties to retail, and as such may be reluctant to move forward with a larger digital presence. Microsoft almost took the plunge with its DRM policy, but withdrew it, and without the support of the big three it will be much harder to change the culture and attitude of the current console gamer.

An all-digital future could flourish on console, and PC gaming has proven that it’s an existence consumers have come to love, but it’s a long way off. Console gamers are reluctant to give up their physical copies, but it may not be because of the prestige of holding onto something (though for a smaller percentage, that could be the case) but rather because no company on the console side has proven to them that there is a significant benefit to utilizing digital distribution.

Valve took a chance on digital distribution and it paid off in spades, the first one of the big three to follow suit will be the winner of the next generation.

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